A FREE festival of poetry in Limerick that stared this week is hoping to highlight poetry to people in the city and county.
April is Poetry Month in Limerick is an annual festival that has been taking place since 2013 in an effort to bring poetry to a wider audience.
Dominic Taylor of the Limerick Writers’ Centre is one of the organisers of the festival. He told the Limerick Post that one of the main aims of the festival is to make poetry more accessible.
“It’s a way of highlighting poetry to the people of Limerick and making it more upfront, more available to people.”
The festival, which began on Wednesday (April 5) will run throughout the month of April, with events including poetry readings, book launches, and literary walking tours all taking place across the city.
Dominic says that it is important the poetry becomes a live, in-person experience, rather than something thought of as a purely academic subject.
“We believe that the live interaction with poets and poetry is much more important to give poetry a live experience for people.
“We don’t charge for any of the events we put on, so it’s accessible for everybody. What we like to say is that poetry must have roots within the clay and soil of the community and you can’t do that if you’re putting barriers like entry fees,” he added.
As well as organising April is Poetry Month in Limerick, Limerick Writers’ Centre are also encouraging people to write their own poetry and have published a large volume of books through their community publishing programme.
“We try to encourage people to write poetry. We have workshops occasionally for that. And we have published, through our community publishing programme, over 142 titles since 2008,” Dominic explains.
“The majority of those 142 titles are poetry books and they were written by people who normally would not get into print at all.”
Over 19 live events will take place as part of April is Poetry Month in Limerick, including four book launches. All live, in-person events will take place at the People’s Museum of Limerick.
